The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1887-10-08

B6ueIdl 6oENhub, du hCCOm pll5uou OIiukoty
for sixty dollars per annum.
To continue this subject of wages,
while we are waiting for the "tatties" to
boil, let me say that the wages OF this
brides husband are eight shillings q
week, he being general servant on q
farm. She expects to exc it out this year
by her poultry, the rector's wife giving
her good start. Next year they will
have garden, and hire potato patch,
and perhaps after awhile get a pig and
COW, by the careful saving of his extra
earnings working nights in the mill,
through the busy season. But only think
how much faith it needs in Providence,t to
marry and begin life on So week.
Farm laborers here, hired regularly
receive one shilling day, twenty-five
cents) and their meat-that is three meals,
four indeed, the porridgs at evening.
It hired only at harvest time, they may
get half crown, sixty-two cents. Wo-
men servants coming in to help by the
day, are glad of sixpence Twelve cents
and their meat.
The women, as rule, are beautiful
seamstresses; their hand sewing is exqui'
site; they following all the old rules we
Albany children were taught sixty
years ago,"-two threads for stitching,
two up and four down for gathering, and
no knots in our thread to begin with
Londonderry is a great market for shirt,
and they are sent all over the country.
They are partly made when sent, but all
the incest part is to be done yet. These
women workers tell me they Can, by work
ing hard, earn ''sevenpence ha-penny" a
day-about fifteen centsl 1 was shown
a beautiful cashmere dress, the bodice
plain, but the skirt deliberately hounced,
and with an overskirt. Yet the price OF
making was only four shillings-one dol
lar! But o, how big shilling looks to
these people, and how far they make it
go!
And now the dinner is ready; but be-
fore it is served,-I must be faithful
historian,-there are brought out two
bottles and an array of glasses, and two
pitchers, jugs they call them, one of cold
and one of hot water. One of the bottle
holds whisky and one port wine. This
is the custom of the country. Yet, I
found only two exceptions to it. The
people do not use drink" in their fami-
lies; they are too poor, if there was no
other reason; but they feel that Irish
hospitality demands the offering of wine
and whisky to the stranger within
their gate" But they are delicate and
do not press it on you, being ready to
let you drink their health in sweet milk
or cold water.
The bottles removed, the dinner was
brought in. Two immense dishes Of "tat-
ties" and then to each guest dining
plate on which were neat slices of boiled
fowl and boiled ham. There was moth
ing else. Bread is never served at din
ner time, nor butter, nor pickles, nor any
dainty entrees. 1t is "butcher's meat or
| fowl; afterward was dessert OF corn
starch pudding and milk. Then we went
out and rambled in the fields and gar
dens for awhile, gathering gooseberries
and black currants in the latter. Then
| came tea, when we had bread and butter,
black currant jam, ana curious kind of
cake, baked the old fashioned way, by
putting the dough into bake-kettle, set
ting it over the hot peat Goals and putting
hot Goals on the lid. have done it my
self, when Western pioneer.
Then the two bottles were brought out
again, and then "the party went out, zone,
at least, bearing away pleasant memories
of visit which showed how much can be
done on 'small wage" If there be
thrift. Certainly was never entertained
more kindly in the palace homes OF the
q. 8. A., than in this Irish cabin.
must say though, that all the cabins
were not as neat as this one. In some of
them 1 know 1 could not have choked
down cup of tea or a mouthful of bread.
1 could not even eat the gooseberries
they gave me till hal taken them home
and washed them in many waters. Some of
them are filthy, and yet this is the good
part of Ireland! What must they be
where they "live like pigs"
And must say of the people, that as a
rule, the women we're very pretty in their
faces, with an abundance Of hair, and
beautiful hair too, sometimes OF glossy
blackness, and sometimes OF dusky red.
And, as a rule, they are delicate in their
physique, really laiylike in form and
stature. Indeed, saw only one typical
Bridget-only one of the kind that APP
pears so often on the tn reshold of Ameri
can homes, and she was 'a Donegal" an
emigrant from another county. Aud
the men we're entirely different from the
race that land in such shoals at Castle
Garden; being, when dressed in their
Sunday clothes, really gentlemanly look
ing. Indeed there were not few dudes
amongst the younger onesl
1 did not, in a single case, see that low
animal look, which I have seen in 80
many of our Irish emigrants, but instead
real frank, noble sort of face.
Ireland does not indeed produce only
men and women OF rough features and
slouchy forms. 1t is the misfortune OF
America that SO many of the poorer ones
1 l. II - "a